A Candle in the Wind
by Shakespira
Summary: A brief look into Alistair's thoughts at Ostagar. An answer to the 10 minute story challenge on CMDA.


**A/N:** _I wrote this as a way to reawaken my muse, using the 10 minute challenge on the CMDA boards: Write a complete story in 10 minutes or less. This was exactly 10 minutes long. As with the other 10 minute challenge I wrote (In Death) this centers on Ostagar. Not sure what it is about that place. ;)  
Thank you heaps, Oleander's One, for the extremely helpful beta. You are such a gift._

**A Candle in the Wind**

Surprise flickered in him, a little shiver of it momentarily staying his arm before he brought his sword arcing down on the darkspawn in front of him. The hesitation was as brief as a blink as he pondered what the residual feeling was that crept along his veins, catlike and stealthy.

When he figured it out, his breath rushed out and his shield arm trembled. Maker save them, he was feeling each Warden death. Like the flare of a candle caught in a draft, bright and sharp and vivid in his blood. And then the darkness as the flame was extinguished, a cold rush of nothingness. He couldn't tell which Warden died, only that a life was snuffed out and a Warden stilled.

He glanced at the woman beside him. Well, girl, really. He felt the heat of a blush, or maybe it was the heat of battle making him suddenly overly warm. Yes, it was battle. What was he thinking? Or maybe he wasn't thinking. Yes, he'd go with that. That would be the usual thing. He shrugged his shoulders; she was younger than he was by several years, and at first he had felt a rush of attraction because she was petite and pretty and soft looking with her cloud of curly blonde hair and wide blue eyes. She didn't belong in armor and blood; she belonged in silk and moonlight. Oh nice, Alistair. You are a romantic, he berated as he plunged onward, slashing at the nearest darkspawn with what he hoped was dash and not panic.

Another candle blinked out, another chill gouging into his blood and bone. Maker's breath, they needed the reinforcements, but the tower seemed so far away. He pushed forward, shouting over his shoulder at the girl to hurry - it wasn't a dance, for Maker's sake! He felt another blush, and an apology fell gracelessly from his lips as he removed a darkspawn from its head, ichor and gore spattering his once shiny armor.

"We have to hurry!" the girl cried, tugging at his arm and making his shield feel twice as heavy.

"Good thinking!" he replied, flashing a beleaguered grin as he pushed on. Maker, another and then another Warden gone; his blood felt heavy in his veins, aching with a mournful sigh as it continued coursing through him.

Each step he took his confidence flagged until it felt as if he carried the weight of Ferelden on his shoulders. The shadow of the tower fell across the path, and he glanced at the girl beside him.

He had been attracted to the girl fighting beside him and now he understood, from her own mouth, that she was too good for him, that her heart belonged to a dead knight and that she thought he was a fool. Well, he was, and he'd apologized for it time and again, but still he was what he was, and so he had turned admiring eyes away from her and pretended he had never longed for her smiles.

They were halfway up the steep stairs in the tower, fighting in close quarters and the only sound was the roaring in his ears. "Steady on!" she called to him and he nodded, not at all surprised that she was taking charge. Chaotic thoughts turned bleak as another bright flash of candlelight shivered into darkness. He slipped to his knees in the ichor. The temptation to stay where he was and howl his pain to the four corners rushed across his thoughts, but he managed to push himself upright.

She went down without a whimper; the beautiful girl with the blonde curls, her gaze staring into a void he couldn't see, the shaft of an arrow neatly separating the space between those blue, blue eyes. Another flash of light winked out. She had been too good for him, and now he had survived and she had not. Maker, there was just nothing fair in that at all. He shook his head, dizzy and queasy and bleeding from a thousand little cuts and nicks and slashes.

An incandescent light, blazing hot and setting his blood and skin on fire, tore through him. Duncan! He crashed to the floor, his grief raw and unformed and screaming through him in an agony of loss.

The 'spawn swarmed him, and the last flash of thought was that nobody would feel his loss in their blood, no candle would flare in the wind and wink out. There was only him.

And then he was gone.


End file.
